Not the Villain You Know
by Kodiak Bear Country
Summary: Written for the sga flashfic villains challenge.  John creates memories with his team because soon everything will change.  Beginning of the Tok'ra series.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Not the Villain You Know  
Author: Kodiak bear  
Rating: T  
Cat: Gen/het/maybe slash, it's a little vague. Really it's OT4 I guess.  
Warnings: AU, it's not a story where everyone is back to normal at the end, but it's not exactly depressing. It's not a deathfic, well, not really.  
Summary: John creates memories with his team because soon everything will change. The Beginning of the Tok'ra series.

**Not the Villain You Know**

by kodiak bear

**  
**

They took him to the beach and they took him to the mountains.

"_I'm sorry, John. It's irreversible, at least with any technology we have. We've sent requests to the Tok'ra and the Asgard, but --"_

"_They aren't exactly sitting on our front porch," John finished wryly._

"_No," Carson said, looking away._

They drove from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Then they boarded a plane and took him to Guam, Hawaii and Iceland. Somewhere along the way they acquired a wheelchair, though he didn't need it often yet.

"_This isn't…I'm sorry, I can't…" Rodney kept sitting and then standing. He lifted his hands in frustration. "There's got to be something," he tried again. "Anything."_

"_The Tok'ra contacted the SGC late last night. There's a symbiote. The Asgard haven't called back." John tried to imagine the feeling of having another living organism in his brain. _

_Rodney gaped. "Would you really do that?"_

"_I don't know. I haven't got that far yet."_

Teyla made love to him, soft and slow, teasing feeling from nerves slowly going to sleep. He hadn't asked and she hadn't offered. She seemed to know he needed to feel it one last time and she did what she'd always done for him: answered unspoken requests. She took him against her and moved her hands across his skin and pretended his trembles were from her and not the disease destroying his body.

Ronon held him through nights when his body shook traitorously. And Rodney tucked blankets around him and held John's head in his lap, stroking brusquely and affectionately – something only Rodney could do -- when the pain grew too great.

"_Is it not giving up who you are just to live?" Teyla gripped her sticks and faced John across the exercise mats. "Is living that important to your people, John, that you would sacrifice so much?"_

"_It's not like that, Teyla," he argued, though a part of him said it was exactly that._

"_Colonel Caldwell was used," she replied stiffly. She paced to the side, swinging her right stick. Then, her eyes softened and for a moment, warmth and compassion showed too brightly for either of them to ignore. Her hand dropped to her side and she let the stick fall to the floor before stepping to him and cupping his cheek in her palm. "I would not wish for you to be used. To be changed." Then she touched her forehead against his and felt the unnatural fever already raging._

_John loved the coolness of her skin, the silky-soft feel against his. "It's not the same. He was infected by a Goa'uld. They're different."_

"_They are the same species," she murmured against his throat._

_He didn't have an answer to that._

John watched sunsets over fields of gold. He listened to thunder roll across horizons scudded with leaded clouds; and watched as lightning flashed to life, skipping from land to sky, because everyone knew that the electrical discharge went from the ground up. Or everyone should, Rodney had declared.

He felt rain drum against his hot skin and lifted his eyes into the downpour, letting it soak his hair until it stuck limply to his face. Until it soaked his shirt and stuck to his skin and he shivered.

His team sat with him. They got wet and cold and when the storm passed, they carried him back inside and stripped him of his wet clothes, drying him with careful strokes of cotton towels and helped him into dry underwear and nothing else.

"John, we must go back."

He blinked tiredly, staring at her blurry shape as she leaned over him. "I know," he rasped. He was too weak to dress himself and walk without help now.

Rodney brought him a cup of hot tea and Ronon slid behind him, easing him upright. "You've probably caught a cold on top of everything," Rodney scolded. John reached feebly for the cup; the degeneration had progressed into his upper body and their time was up.

His hands trembled around the mug and Rodney laced his fingers over John's and held them tightly, looking steadily at him. With a small nod, John accepted the help and sipped, before pulling away and leaning back against Ronon, signaling he was finished.

"_What good are your machines and science if they can't cure this?" Ronon paced around the infirmary, his movements jerky and full of unleashed anger._

"_Science can't fix everything, Ronon. If it could, the Wraith wouldn't still exist and people would never grow old." John tried to look supportive. "But I appreciate the thought."_

_Ronon stopped pacing and turned to John, his hands clenched into fists by his side. "I'm not good at standing around. At not doing anything."_

_John nodded. He understood that. A crooked grin escaped. "Well, how about we do something then."_

They flew him back to the SGC. The Tok'ra were waiting. They had lost a lot in the war against the Goa'uld and were still recovering. Their numbers didn't increase and when a host died, unless a new one was found, the symbiote died also.

They scolded Lam and John, "It might be too late."

"It was gonna die anyway," John whispered.

The Tok'ra sighed. "Fortunately, we understood you would wait till the last possible moment and we brought Aenath with us. Hopefully she will be able to reverse the damage and heal you, but it will be a long, painful process, mostly for her but you will feel some pain initially."

John coughed on a laugh. "It can't hurt anymore than it does." Inside his body lived a bright, raging center of agony that grew greater every day, even as he lost feeling everywhere else.

Rodney paled, Ronon growled, frustrated, and Teyla held his hand tighter. They'd expected Carson to find a last minute miracle and now that John was about to be blended, they realized what he'd already accepted – there wasn't going to be any reprieve this time.

"_You've accepted the Tok'ra's offer, Colonel Sheppard?" _

_John winced. It sounded so innocent. Their offer. Not anything like what it really was. He was going to let another being enter him, invade his mind. His memories and thoughts and everything that made him John Sheppard were going to be at this thing's mercy. He'd seen what the Goa'uld could do. They could subdue the host, take control, and fake it in a way such that no one was any wiser. What if this snake was a double agent? What if it decided the galaxy was wide open and now was the time to take control over other planets, and shoved John to the side, leaving him a spectator in his own body?_

"_I have," he answered, frankly impressed by the control he kept. "I'll become a host, but I've got one condition."_

"_We are listening, Colonel."_

_His team was standing loosely around him. He'd shared his plans. They knew he'd need them. He had done a lot of things alone before, but going to the brink of death… John wanted them there. Needed them there. He didn't have to do this alone and he didn't want to. Not anymore._

"_I'm going to do a little sightseeing first --"_

The host had already died so there was no transference from one body to the next, just them helping him roll to his side, then someone held his head straight and another person opened his jaw and held it. He'd said he wouldn't move, but now that it came down to it, John wasn't so sure.

He knew his heart had sped up, he could feel it thumping hard against the inside of his chest; he was surprised that it still worked when so much else was shutting down. But Carson had said his internal organs and functions would be the last to go. _Smooth muscle tissue, _Carson had said, _appears to be less susceptible. _ The disease had attacked his skeletal muscle and the nerves in his extremities first.His motor control had slowly disappeared until now he found his hands and feet refused to respond at all.

When they set the symbiote down next to his mouth, he tried to close his eyes.

When it pierced the back of his throat, he gagged and mentally thrashed from the pain, but wasn't able to twitch a finger against the invasion. In a moment, the agony began to ease and he felt his eyesight grow hazy; his body felt far-away and unreachable.

"What happened?" demanded Rodney, "what's it doing to him?"

The dual voice of the Tok'ra representative said, "Aenath is going to place Colonel Sheppard in a state much like you call a coma – to make the blending easier and to begin healing the damage."

"Will he be in pain for long?" Teyla asked tightly. Somewhere in the distance he was aware of her still holding his hand.

_Don't let go, please, don't let go._

"Not much longer."

Strong hands rolled him to his back; his mouth was eased shut and his eyes were closed then taped.

John felt a scream bubbling up – he wasn't in a coma. He was still _here_.

_//Be calm, John Sheppard. It is taking more time than usual. Soon, you will sleep//_

_Why?_

_//Because you stubbornly waited so long to be blended// _

_Be happy I agreed at all._

_//These memories, the places you went while already succumbing to the disease, were they so important that you risked death? Much longer and I do not think I could have repaired the damage//_

John found it easier to swallow. Whether it was from the symbiote's efforts or just that he was beyond the unknown now, he didn't know. Her question sparked images in his mind. Emotions. He remembered sitting on the beach, white, smooth sand falling through his fingers and surf splashing against his feet, already growing numb.

He remembered long hours spent in the rental car, napping against the window, and hearing nothing but the hum of pavement and the drone of his team talking quietly around him.

The nights spent curled up in the jumble of their bodies.

_Yes, it was worth it. It was my last chance to be with them as myself. _

_//You will still be you, John. I am not a villain, I am not a Goa'uld. We will share many things, but I will not take freely of your body//_

_But you'll still be here. And if this works, they'll age and they'll die, and I'll still look the same when I go to their funerals. Nothing will be the same again. _

_// I do understand, John, more than you know//_

John's last day with his team flooded back, played across his mind as he sank away into unconsciousness. Ronon had carried him through the prairie grass because his legs were uncoordinated and prone to giving underneath him and a wheelchair wasn't designed for walking through fields; Teyla carried the picnic basket. They'd eaten lunch on the banks of a nameless river and played chess, because as Rodney had said, with forced irritability, once John was snaked, he'd be harder to beat. They'd reminisced over old missions, lost friends and good times.

The heat had worked in tandem with John's fever so that when the storm started just as they neared the rented cabin on the edges of a clover field, he'd asked to stay. To feel the raging storm in his bones, and the cold, cool touch of spring rain against his burning skin.

"_Will you return to Atlantis?" Teyla asked._

"_If I have anything to say about it," John retorted._

The End (well not really, now there's a whole bunch of AU adventures to write!)

added a POV piece of Aenath, chapter 2 of this story


	2. Chapter 2

There's Always Two Sides

The POV's not seen in Not the Villain You Know

** Aenath: **Tok'ra, older than sin, lonelier than the cosmos

_I'm sorry. I did not want to take you with me.  
_

My host is dying.

I'm dying.

There is not one without the other anymore. Part of me wishes it were otherwise but I think, maybe, a larger part of me is tired and ready. We, Simtu and I, we have been together for a long time. The longest I think I have ever been with a host since my first, and that is a very long time indeed.

_//I do not mind; I regret I am unable to heal you this final time// _

We share our sadness; our regrets.

I try to comfort Simtu. He is old and tired and the injury gained on the Ori-controlled world was too great for his body and my will to overcome. I helped stabilize his organs long enough for us to return through the ring to our people. I was not so naïve enough to believe that a willing host had joined our ranks in our absence.

The Goa'uld had birthed a galaxy of fear against all of our kind, regardless that we Tok'ra were not of the same evil spirit. Regardless of how we fought against their tyranny and destruction. It was not so simple of a thing to offer long life and health in exchange for the sharing of a life. Humans feared their body being taken, their will, subverted, and for all that I knew, I did not blame them.

Simtu tosses on the bed in the hut. We have gone above ground now. The Ori will find us whether we skulk in crystal caverns or structures built on the planet's surface.

Anise, one of the few of our kind left, cares for Simtu's body and gives him drinks that help strengthen me so that I may strengthen him. Her host, Freya, is in good health and recently promoted to the High Council. After the attack on Revanna, we were scattered, leaderless. It took many months before we organized and banded together again.

_//We have been through much, Simtu. I shall miss our life together//_

_But you will not miss your life? You do not regret a premature death?_

_//If it is my fate, I do not fight against what is// _

I was born with the knowledge of my kind, blessed with the genetic memory that made our race capable of such galactic devastation. I knew before I took my first host, what it would be like. The joy, the pain, the loss. I, who was condemned to live forever (or so it feels), would lose many hosts.

For the Goa'uld, they would as soon discard one body to gain another, better and more beautiful, but for us of the Tok'ra, it is not the same.

We bond. We love. We cry, though the only tears to be seen are those on the hosts' cheeks.

I sleep. Simtu sleeps.

I work to keep his body alive even while I try to rest. His lungs fill with fluid, his kidney's have failed, and I cannot keep up with the toxins building in his tissues and blood. It has been days since we returned, but the end is very near. Organ death is a painful death, but I can at least take his pain.

"Aenath," Anise calls.

"Yes?"

I am very tired; keeping Simtu alive has drained me.

"There is a host. A human in the Stargate program," she rushes to explain. "He was exposed to a fatal toxin during a mission. We have examined the information from their doctors and we believe it is likely you can cure him."

Simtu's body does not respond so I open his eyes for him. I gaze at Anise and see hope there. She is an arrogant being, but worn by the losses we have suffered. Her work had been her life, until so many died and survival became more important.

She does not wish to see me die.

There are so few of us left.

"Let me see the information on this boy."

If he is a human, then he is a child. And when I see his picture, I am stunned by his youth.

There is fragility there, in juxtaposition with the strength of his jaw; unruly dark hair and lovely hazel eyes that say so much while trying to say nothing.

I want to say no, I want to tell Anise I will die with Simtu and end this constant cycle of life and death, but his eyes… they do not let me.

"Very well," I whisper. "You may tell them I agree."

Anise does not speak against my words. I know these Tau'ri and their arrogance; they feel it is they that consent to blend with us; they do not realize what it means. What it costs. That it is us that consent to blend with _them_.

The Goa'uld use Sarcophagi to extend the natural life of their host and to live longer, as if our natural span were not enough. But us of the Tok'ra, we do not use the device. Our hosts age and die, and each time we blend with another, if there is one, we lose more of our life, our energy, and our soul.

We are androgynous. We have no gender, but there are some of us that cling to whichever gender we grow more comfortable with. After my first three hosts, I assumed the female gender. I had yearned for another female host. And here I am presented with another male, one who from the looks of him, does not even know himself yet. He has lived such an infinitesimal fraction of my life, and it is he who thinks _consent_._  
_

Bah! Tau'ri.

"We will tell them," she says.

When she has gone, I lift the picture and the hastily scribbled note on just who this potential host is.

_John Sheppard, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF. Location, Pegasus Galaxy.  
_

Ah, he's with the group that traveled to Atlantis.

We have not been on good terms with the Tau'ri for a while now. The loss of Selmak did little to help. Jacob Carter was a good man and I respected him. We were often on missions, Simtu and I, and could do little to support their cause, but we heard. Perhaps this will open the door again, help our people heal the wounds caused by stubbornness and misadventures.

Kanan, he was an old fool. He took advantage of O'Neill and did more harm in that one moment than all the years of good Selmak did.

_For every good deed I do, ten missteps will be remembered._

_//Simtu// _

He wakes and I feel certain it is our final time together. I have pushed myself as far as I can and still leave enough energy to survive another blending and fuel the work I will need to do to heal this other boy.

_//A host has been found// _

A rush of relief encompasses me; sorrow; pain.

_Let me see this man._

_//He is a child, even compared to you// _

Simtu was close in age to this Tau'ri when we were blended, but it was many years ago, and time seems to stretch longer before and behind me.

_He is young._

_//Yes//_

_But you will not die.  
_

I hold Simtu close to me; inside me. We are one and two and it is what our kind was meant to be; we are symbiotes and it is only through misfortune and chance that the evil or our kind grew dominant.

_I will miss you. _

_//And I you// _

His pain is so very great.

I fight to take as much of it as I can, but my loyalties are already split. I know the boy I will soon join will need as much of my strength as Simtu. John Sheppard will be in pain, sick, and afraid.

_Aenath, let me go. It is time. Our people will keep you safe, let you recover. There is no reason to risk more staying with me. I would not go to my death knowing I weakened you further._

_//Simtu// _

My pain is so very great. I have loved Simtu for over two hundred years and now it is time to say goodbye.

I do not accept the privilege to go peacefully with him and I blame the boy's eyes. If I had not seen them, I am not so sure I would have agreed to the blending. The need to be done with this life is strong.

They do not understand the depth of what we feel. Not only do we carry the pain we accumulate during our life, but all the pain of those before us.

_//I do not wish for you to go. I am a greedy and selfish being. It has not been long enough// _

I am crying, though I have no tears to shed.

There are no barriers between us.

He is crying.

_You have given me more than I had a right to ask for. I have the benefit of knowing you will always remember me. I have lived over twice as long as many of my kind; we have seen many of our friends fall; there are no regrets. _

_//There is one// _

I feel Simtu's heart slowing. I am aware of Anise and the others arriving. I will leave Simtu soon and be placed in a chamber to keep me alive until I blend with Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard.

_What?_

_//That I could not be with you longer// _

I feel his love; sadness; pain; regret; goodbye.

It is the end.

_Go! Before it is too late.  
_

His heart stutters and I begin to pull away, to release tendrils that have been joined with his mind for centuries. It hurts. I follow the instinctual path and slide through his throat, into his mouth. Then there are hands on me and despite my wish to die with Simtu, I feel a jolt of panic.

What if this John hates my kind? What if he never accepts me?

What if he asks me to leave and then I will die alone, without the comfort of my host holding me close?

I am scared, again.

And I'm lonely.

_//Simtu//_

_Coming soon: Tok'ra adventure series 1: 'Cause I'm back, in black _


End file.
